In terms of the elementary school and junior high school English teachers’

CHAPTER SIX

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 6.1 Conclusion

This research was aimed at understanding elementary school and junior high school English teachers’ perceptions and implementation of remedial instruction for underachievers. Starting from the controversial issue of the government’s extending English education to a lower grade, the discussion was lead to teaching mixed-ability classes, to the existence of a certain group of underachievers in English learning, and finally to the investigation of the teachers perceptions, understanding, and implementation of remedial instruction for these underachievers. Through the quantitative teacher questionnaires and the qualitative teacher interviews, the researcher then analyzed the data in detail and generated the findings for further discussions. The major findings of the present study were briefly summarized as follows.

In terms of the elementary school and junior high school English teachers’

perceptions regarding the implementation of remedial instruction for underachievers, it was found that there was a common agreement among the teachers on the pressing need of helping underachieving students with remedial instruction. The teachers also demonstrated strong willingness to implementing remedial instruction for the underachievers.

The results also showed that the teachers’ knowledge about remedial instruction

was only slightly above the average, and the pre-service and in-service teacher

training courses specifically on remedial instruction was rarely reported. The findings

implied that there is a need for the teachers to enrich and deepen their professional

knowledge about remedial instruction, and the provision of teacher training courses

on the issue is also necessary.

Considering the remedial strategies that teachers adopted in dealing with mixed-ability classes, it was concluded that remedial instruction does not necessarily take extra hours or human resources. Teachers’ constant interactions with the underachievers within regular English classes were considered to be easy while promising in sustaining students’ learning motivation. Teachers’ praise and encouragement with caring and supportive attitude also have profound influence on the students’ learning attitude and outcomes.

Some of the effective and commonly adopted classroom strategies were cooperative learning and peer tutoring. The findings suggested that only grouping students together or only assigning the slower learners with a peer tutor did not guarantee the successful use of the remedial strategies. Rather, the teachers need to have a thorough and in-depth understanding of the theories and practices of a specific strategy.

As for the current administration of remedial instruction in elementary schools and junior high schools, the most commonly adopted programs were “after-school session” and “pull-out resource program.” Despite the frequent administration of these programs, only moderate effects were found for these programs in enhancing the learning of the underachievers. On the contrary, some of the programs proven to be effective, such as the computer-assisted instruction and the school-university partnership, were rarely adopted by the teachers and the schools.

Furthermore, when implementing remedial instruction, the English teachers tended to face difficulties such as overloaded with teaching and administrative work, the lack of complete sets of relative measures planned by the schools, hard to motivate the students’ learning, and limited progress of the students’ English ability through remedial instruction.

In response to the difficulties encountered by the teachers, the necessary support

identified in the present study included reducing the teachers’ teaching workload, gaining support from the parents, integrating the community resources, providing underachievers with appropriate learning materials, and implementing ability grouping for English courses.

With respect to the future implementation of remedial instruction, the findings suggested the establishment of a remedial instruction system which involves the interaction between the bottom-up implementation and the top-down support of remedial instruction. That is, the frontline teachers play active roles in the implementation of remedial instruction and are fully supported by the school administration and the educational authorities.

In fact, individual differences among the students are normal and necessary phenomena. Hence remedial instruction is not aimed at bringing all the students up to the same level of academic ability. Rather, it is a strategy that provides the students with necessary help throughout their learning process so as to help sustain their learning motivation and interests. With the motivation in learning, the learner’s autonomy would gradually come into play, taking care of the student’s own learning.

In conclusion, the ultimate goal of remedial instruction is to foster the learning of all students and to ensure that all students have the right to equal opportunity to quality compulsory education.

6.2 Pedagogical Implications

Findings of the present study have several pedagogical implications for the

practicing teachers, school administrators, teacher training institutes, and educational

authorities. In terms of the practicing teachers, it is suggested that, first, early

implementation of remedial instruction is the key to prevent the students from losing

learning motivation and eventually giving up on English learning. Secondly, to avoid

the students’ learning difficulties from accumulating, multiple assessments should be consistently and systematically conducted in the English classrooms so as for the teachers to identify the students’ learning difficulties and their needs in an earlier stage (Yeh, 2000). Third, the teachers’ caring and supportive attitude and their good interactions with the students are one of the most direct and powerful strategies to sustain the students’ learning interests and motivation.

As pointed out by Tu (2001), remedial instruction is a spiral process of

“assessment—teaching—reassessment.” In the light of the limited effects of the remedial programs currently implemented in the elementary and junior high schools, the implications for the teachers and school administrators are that the effects of remedial programs must be evaluated in a systematic way with both formative and summative assessment. The purpose of program evaluation is to understand how a certain program is effective in assisting the students’ learning. Based on the assessment results, the teachers and the school administrators could make necessary improvement of the program.

Another recommendation for the school administrators is the integration of resources from parents, community, and universities in the neighborhood. For example, the schools could arrange a specific time for remedial instruction, during which voluntary parents or university students are recruited to provide individualized instructions to assist the students’ learning.

In terms of the teacher training programs, it is proposed that a comprehensive and in-depth introduction of remedial education is necessary for both pre-service programs and in-service seminars and workshops. Moreover, the promotion of effective remedial strategies and programs, and the collection of teachers’ ideas into the teachers’ resource bank are recommended in the present study.

Implications for the educational authority is allocating a special fund to the

schools to provide the disadvantaged students with better and more comprehensive assistance.

6.3 Limitations and Recommendations for Future Research

In this section, limitations of the present study and their corresponding recommendations were discussed. There are three major limitations in this study, the sampling scale, the perspective explored, and the research methods adopted. In terms of the sampling scale, the present study took only the teachers in Taipei City as the target population for the investigation of the teachers’ perceptions and implementation of remedial instruction. Since the situation of remedial instruction in different areas would be very different due to several factors, such as the educational policies of the local government, educational resources, and teaching resources. Thus the results of the present study served to reflect only the current situation of remedial instruction in Taipei City but not in any other areas. It is suggested that the future study could adopt similar methodologies to investigate the current situation of other areas. The scope of the research could also be broaden to a nation-wide survey so as to further investigate the different problems and needs in different geographical areas.

As for the perspective explored, this research probed into the issue of remedial education only from the practicing teachers’ perspectives. In fact, the construction of a sound remedial instruction system requires the collaboration of the teachers, students, parents, school administration, social resources, educational authorities, etc. To gain more insights into the issue of remedial instruction, it is suggested that the voices of all aspects should be included for better understanding the significance and the future directions of remedial instruction.

The present study was also limited in the research methods. The researchers

adopted mainly the quantitative research methods, while only a very small number of

the teachers were sampled for the qualitative teacher interviews. In this way, the

results of the present study might not be able to deeply and comprehensively reflect

the current situation of remedial education. In response to this pitfall, it is suggested

that qualitative and longitudinal investigations into the actual practices of remedial

instruction in the field could provide a larger and clearer picture of the issue of

remedial instruction.